Free Republic

Discourteous remarks about Afghanistan made by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan at the recent Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting were an insult to the Afghan nation reeling from the Taliban takeover. In his remarks, Khan described the non-monolithic Taliban group as a predominately ethnic Pashtun movement, implicitly casting millions of Pashtuns as the Taliban’s adherents.... But perceptions matter.... ...To be sure, it is difficult to determine whether the Taliban will ever be able to run a non-ideological Afghan state. But by casting it as a Pashtun movement, Pakistan risks sparking Pashtun nationalism in more than 40 million Pashtuns who...

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan took an ominous tone Friday when speaking about efforts to bring Iran back in line with a 2015 nuclear agreement saying, "It's not going well."... ...Sullivan said there has been "some progress" over the last few days but did not appear hopeful that a concrete resolution would be found following months of indirect talks with Tehran. President Biden made it a top priority for his administration to bring Iran back to the negotiating table .....

In June, 1966, Shukairy defiantly declared that the Palestine Liberation Army was receiving military assistance as well as training from the Chinese Communists. In the same month, as a corollary, PLO announced , in programs broadcast over Radio Cairo, that it was preparing to intervene in the Vietnam war.

Iran on Saturday downplayed reports of a large blast near the Natanz nuclear facility in the Isfahan Province, saying it was the result of an unannounced air defense drill during which a missile was fired over the area housing the sensitive uranium enrichment site. The Natanz nuclear facility is a major part of Iran's nuclear program. With over 19,000 centrifuges currently operational, it is considered Iran's main uranium enrichment site and as such, it has been the target of several attempts to hamper its operations, mostly via cyberattacks. The most famous of the latter is the 2010 Stuxnet strike that...

JERUSALEM—When Donald J. Trump became president of the United States in January of 2017, it was not obvious to almost anyone that he would become the first American leader in history to broker four Arab-Israeli peace agreements. Nor was it obvious that he would be helped in this ground-breaking effort by a team of four modern Orthodox Jews that included Jared Kushner, David Friedman, Jason Greenblatt and Avi Berkowitz. It certainly wasn’t obvious that David Friedman – whom Trump appointed as his ambassador to Israel – would then turn to the world’s largest Christian television network to tell the story...

Shanghai Academy acts as a front for Chinese spy recruitment, according to FBI The Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington, D.C., think tank, partnered with a Shanghai policy center that the FBI has described as a front for China’s intelligence and spy recruitment operations, according to public records and federal court documents. The Brookings Doha Center, the think tank’s hub in Qatar, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in January 2018, the institution said. The academy is a policy center funded by the Shanghai municipal government that has raised flags within the FBI. The partnership...

CAIRO -- Libya’s ruling presidential council said Saturday that it suspended the county’s chief diplomat, accusing her of not coordinating foreign policy with the council. The three-member body, which serves as Libya’s president, also barred Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush from traveling abroad pending an investigation into what it described as monopolization of foreign policy, according to a decree by the council.

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN)Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi escaped an assassination attempt on Sunday after an explosive-laden drone targeted his residence, the country's military said. Al-Kadhimi went on to Twitter moments after the attack and called for "calm and restraint from everyone.".. ..A source close to the Iraqi leader said Sunday that Al-Kadhimi was returning from overseeing security forces engaged in a stand-off with protesters at the southern gate of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area of Baghdad where the the Prime Minister's residence and other government and diplomatic buildings are located, around the time of the drone attack. As...

At gala opening of Peace through Strength Center, former ambassador says Arab-Israeli conflict on cusp of ending; Pompeo swipes Biden over Afghanistan withdrawal Speaking at the gala opening of The Friedman Center for Peace through Strength at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem on Monday night, former US ambassador David Friedman said that his fledgling organization will work to bring Muslims to Jerusalem, so that they see for themselves the way Israel protects holy sites, including the Al Aqsa Mosque. Muslim tourism to Israel was a central pillar of the Donald Trump administration’s approach to Middle East peace, Friedman added....

Emma Bonino not only is responsible for millions of abortions but she supports same-sex 'marriage,' transgenderism, and sex education. Bonino, a former abortionist once praised by Pope Francis as “a great Italian,” will appear in a Catholic church to present the pro-migrant campaign “ERO STRANIERO: La humanità che fa bene” (“I was a stranger: Humanity that does good”) As an abortion rights activist and an abortionist herself, Bonino is directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of approximately six million Italian babies between 1968 and today. Bonino’s appearance in the Church of San Defendente, Ronco di Cassato, on July 26...

At least 14 people were killed and several others were wounded in central Damascus on Wednesday morning in an explosion on a Syrian military bus, Syrian state TV reported. According to additional reports from Syrian and Lebanese outlets, the casualties were Iranian officers. Syrian state TV showed footage of the charred bus, reporting that the blasts occurred while people were heading to work and school. As of yet, according to the reports, no organization has claimed responsibility for the blast, which occurred at a main bus-transfer point under the Hafez al-Assad bridge, where vehicles converge and head out to different...

Nazi Arab: 1930s, 1940s & beyond Hitler was clear about his disdain for the Arab world, writing in Mein Kampf: "As a völkisch man, who appraises the value of men on a racial basis, I am prevented by mere knowledge of the racial inferiority of these so-called 'oppressed nations' from linking the destiny of my own people with theirs".[1] And the Grand Mufti al-Husseini has said "that after the Jews, the Germans would destroy the Arabs— he knew this."[46]In the 1930s, Arab students returning from studying in Europe were determined to found the Arab Nazi party.[2]In February, 1932, the predominat...

PARIS, Sept 12 (Reuters) - The Taliban are lying and France will not have any relationship with its newly-formed government, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said late on Saturday before heading for talks in Qatar on Sunday to discuss future evacuations from Afghanistan... .."France refuses to recognise or have any type of relationship with this government. We want actions...

@ColumbiaBugle President Donald Trump On Hannity Tonight: "I wanted to get out. I wish we never went in. The biggest mistake we made in the history of our country was going into the Middle East."

Israel’s military is accelerating its operational plans against Iran due to the progress of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi has warned. “The progress of the Iranian nuclear program has led the IDF to accelerate its operational plans and the recently approved defense budget is earmarked for that,” he said. Kohavi commented as Prime Minister Naftali Bennett landed in the United States ahead of a visit with US President Joe Biden and other senior officials. Bennett is expected during his first visit to the White House to push Biden to harden his approach to...

The rapid Taliban advance stranded several thousand Americans in Kabul and across Afghanistan. The US Embassy in Kabul has urged Americans first to shelter in place and then to make their way to the airport for evacuation. It warned, however, that it could not guarantee the safety of the routes to the airport. That may be sage advice: The Taliban have shut off access to the airport. Bold Afghans now share videos via social media of Taliban thugs using whips and pipes to beat men, women, and children who try to go to the airport. Administration officials like National Security...

(George Bush) betrayed this country! He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place!

The Center for American Progress – a leading left-wing think-tank influential in the Biden White House – partnered with a Chinese Communist Party influence group on reports guiding American policy in the Middle East.Often highlighted as for being “closely aligned” with the White House during the Obama years, the Center for American Progress (CAP) carries similar influence under Biden, counting several former employees and fellows as officials in Joe Biden’s White House. The think tank’s Chinese Communist Party-sponsored paper from July 2015 is entitled “Exploring Avenues for China-U.S. Cooperation on the Middle East”. One of the paper’s authors is now...

That the decrepit state of planning in the leadup to a known and announced withdrawal deadline persists so late in the game is unforgivable.That the decrepit state of planning in the leadup to a known and announced withdrawal deadline persists so late in the game is unforgivable. …U.S. officials have insisted the military will be able to keep terrorism threats in check through what’s known as over-the-horizon operations, or those launched from outside the country. But plans for exactly how those operations will work and where those troops could be based are still being crafted. The United States does not...

No one ever accused Joe Biden of making much sense. Even more coherent presidents than our septuagenarian-in-chief have been known to issue contradictory policies, the product of feuding factions within an administration.Even so, the news out of the White House last week that the Biden administration wants the members of the Organization of the Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC) to produce more oil is baffling. Combine that with that same administration’s continuing efforts to restrict domestic production, and it is downright enraging. Biden is perfectly happy for there to be more oil produced in the world, as long as the jobs and...